MusiEmotica: Musical Diary: Emotional Piano. Live Piano Improvisations

In 1979 my parents gave me a Cassette tape recorder as a present for Christmas. Immediately I began to record myself playing on the piano. I had attempted around that time to write down a few composition with pen and notepaper, but that was such a tedious process... so I had the idea to just record myself improvising music on the piano, playing with chords, melodies, themes, then later I would listen and transcribe things, making compositions out of that raw material.

In 1979 I had gotten that piano as a present from my grandmother: a nice upright Yamaha, shiny dark mahogany wood. It was a bit higher than most uprights and had a phantastic clear and bright sound. Also was easy to play, the keys went so light.

And so I began my musical diary: live improvisations not every day, but every few days. Reflecting my moods, emotions, events, with live play. Sometimes ty fingers would play by themselves, without plan or concept. Often musical themes similar to the music I was just playing and learning in my piano lessons. Sometimes a bit try-and-error, experimenting with chords, not focusing on a musical stories but just trying out how various things would work. But sometimes I felt like telling a full story, letting myself drift through motives, chords, harmonies, with some loose kind of structure. When I now listen to those recordings on theese old tapes, I hear my moods, the classical cliches that my fingers were following and slightly modifying and adapting to my emotional expressions.

I kept creating those recordings for many years to come, but I never actually did what I had set out: creating an actual composition from that material. Still too much work involved, having to listen, to note down what I played etc. Maybe now there is a music-to-notation app which could do that for me...

Things got finally more convenient when in 1997 I began using my MIDI keyboard to record these improvisations. Now I had the notation of my playing right there. And so I kept playing and recording those improvisations.

In 2015 I did publish a set of my first MIDI recordings of those improvisations. I did not have many then, just a few in 1997 and very few in 1998. Here is a link to the album on Spotify: 

https://open.spotify.com/album/4CfztXMzdgw5Z9dhPIWw8e

But in 1999 this recording activity of improvisations took off, and I even attempted then to record already a few such improvisations with some kind of structure in mind, so that it would later be easier to create actual music compositions.

And so I decided to have a go at my old recordings from 1999. All in Cakewalk format, which I am still using. At that time it was plain MIDI, resp. the audio samples of the Yamaha MU-80. I still have that nice little synth, but it stands in the corner, unused. Nowadays, since about 15 years, I am using the fabulous Garritan Personal Orchestra, now in version 5. I added the soft synth Aria player and loaded the piano sample. Then a few adjustments, setting controller 7 to a reasonable value, setting reverb convolution to Medium Concert Hall and general reverb setting to Concert Hall 1. Then I listened and edited those improvisations. Removed a few accidentally pressed notes, removed a few awkward pauses when I was deliberating which chord to play next, did sometimes increase the tempo a bit, removed a few duplicate notes where I just had tried out something. 

Not much editing was actually needed, and in one evening I had about 55 minutes of new material -never published before. Live piano music, played by myself, almost 25 years ago.

I originally called the whole album "Musical Diary: March 1999", because these recordings were just from two days in March. I named the tracks just with the date, followed by A,B,C... But after MusicDiffusion, the music distributor, asked for a revision of this album title because it was "too generic", I changed it to "Musical Diary: Emotional Piano", 

And here it is, my newest album under the Label "MusiEmotica". It has been distributed to 32 online channels. 

Here on YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5wUHigTjXk&list=OLAK5uy_mug2_Sx7Lgz7ppoSL-AJPxMm-9Alz6D78&index=2